Mathew W. Sagal
Alliance Management Group, Senior Manager, Marblehead, MA, USA

Gene Slowinski
Rutgers University, Director, Strategic Alliance Research, Newark, NJ, USA

Kenneth B. Freese
Los Alamos National Laboratories, Manager, Intellectual Asset Strategies

Steven Ferguson
Office of Technology Transfer, National Institutes of Health, Deputy Director, Licensing and Entrepreneurship, Rockville, MD, USA

The Alliance for Advanced Energy Solutions —Los Alamos and Chevron

From the beginning, the partnership between Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Chevron Advanced Energy Technology has been unique. Both partners saw numerous ways in which they could work together to help Chevron solve some of the most troublesome and common problems of the oil and gas industry, while addressing U.S. energy security concerns. With an initial project in place in 2003 (LANL’s wireless communication technology INFICOMM), the parties agreed to further the relationship with an alliance, the Alliance for Advanced Energy Solutions. Through the Alliance, LANL’s Technology Transfer Division found a way to expedite the projects between the parties using an umbrella Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). The umbrella CRADA is a particularly effective means to streamline approvals and coordinate large numbers of projects with a single partner. Because the umbrella CRADA sets the overall contractual terms of interaction including protection of proprietary information and rights for licensing of intellectual property, the Alliance is able to focus more effectively on identifying, defining, and executing technical programs. Since the Alliance agreement was signed in 2004, LANL and Chevron have started 15 projects together with more projects in development. For more information on the Alliance see:
http://www.techcommjournal.com/archive.php?articleID=35.